Configuring Financial Analyzer for Web Access

Overview of configuration procedure

Follow these general steps to configure Financial Analyzer for Web access:

1. Ensure that you have installed all the necessary components that are required to run Financial Analyzer through the Web. These include:
   • Express Web Agent 6.3.3

   • Web listener software (Oracle Web Application Server is recommended)

2. Enable Web Agent security in Oracle Express Instance Manager, as described in "Procedure: Enabling Web Agent security".

3. Modify the Web listener, as described in "Procedure: Adding virtual directories to the Web listener".

4. Provide the URL for the shared database to the users who need Web access to that database, as described in "Providing the URL for a shared database to users". By specifying this URL in their browsers, users will be able to see everything that the administrator has distributed to them.

Procedure: Enabling Web Agent security

Follow these steps to enable Web Agent security:

1. Start Oracle Express Instance Manager.

2. In the Web Agent tab, set the following setting:

   WebAuthenticationType=BASIC

   or

   WebAuthenticationType=FORM

   Leave all other settings as the default.

3. Choose Set.

4. In the Security tab, set the following setting:

   RequirePasswordEncryption=NO

   Leave all other settings as the default.

5. Choose Set.

6. Choose OK.

Note: After you complete the above procedure, you must restart Express Server to enable Web Agent security.

Procedure: Adding virtual directories to the Web listener

Follow these steps to modify the Web listener.

1. Start your Web browser.

2. Add the mappings for the two virtual directories that you noted from the End of Installation screen in the Super administrator and Administrator component installations into your Web listener.

   Important: You can change the name of the ofastart directory, but you cannot change the name of the ofaweb directory.

   Notes: If you an enabling more than one shared database for Web access with one Web listener you will need to specify unique ofastart virtual directories for each shared database.

   Unix is case sensitive, so you must use the correct case when you enter the virtual directories. NT is not case sensitive.

   The virtdirs.txt text file describes the virtual directory structures that you must create. It is located in the ofaweb directory on the Web Agent server.

3. Restart the Web listener. If you are using Oracle Web Server, you must restart the Web listener whenever you modify it.

   The Web listener checks that the directories that you entered exist. If any directories are not present, you receive an error message.

   Important: If you move or delete any of the files or directories on the server that are referenced in the Web listener directory mappings, you must update the mappings to refer to the new locations.

Providing the URL for a shared database to users

To complete the configuration of Financial Analyzer for Web access, provide users who are to have Web access to a shared database with a URL that consists of the name of the Web server and the name of the virtual directory for the shared database (ofastart).

For example, assume that the name of the Web server is servername. Users can access the shared database on the Web by specifying the following URL in their browsers:

http://servername/ofastart

Notify your users that they must accept cookies if they are prompted to do so. Also alert them that the Netscape browser will prompt them to download Java classes the first time that they access Financial Analyzer on the Web. If they have chosen Smart Update, they will be asked to specify a location for downloading these files.